Anna Lea Hucht
17 Nov 2016 - 22 Jan 2017
Anna Lea Hucht, Ohne Titel, 2013, Aquarell auf Papier, 111,5 x 98 cm (gerahmt), Privatsammlung; Courtesy: Die Künstlerin
BONNER KUNSTPREIS 2015 - ANNA LEA HUCHT
17 November 2016 - 22 January 2017
In her drawings and watercolors Anna Lea Hucht unfolds a bizarre yet magical world. Her works on paper let us catch a glimpse into a universe in which the familiar and the strange connect in quite an unusual way. The settings which we often view upon from above feel familiar and provide a steady frame for all kinds of oddities and curiosities – like dancing dervishes or ghostly creatures – as well as mundane situations and objects that through isolation and shifts in form and dimension seem to be charged with magic. These rooms appear to be under some kind of spell which has us assume a spiritual kinship between the artist and the masters of surrealism and magical realism. However, the art of the latter lacks the addition of humor which is often part of Anna Lea Hucht’s works. A good example for this is one of her watercolors depicting a group of fantastic African figures that as ethnological quotes now inhabit a western living room. Being one half human and one half masked creatures, in their new environment they stage a clash of cultures which in Hucht’s work is a matter of course. Secretly, one might wonder, though, what kind of rituals are practiced in this living room... A question that will most likely remain unanswered since Hucht’s compositions can never be broken down into a pictorial narrative. In fact, the opposite is the case: Through mutual questioning the individual objects are illuminated and thus charged with the pathos of the mysterious.
Thus, it is not surprising that Anna Lea Hucht developed the isolation of the object further in form of her ceramic works. In 2007, she started creating her first sculptures that can be seen as the result of a densification of the repertoire of forms used in her works on paper. Her latest sculptures look like mutants between vases, head shapes, living room decorations and pre-Columbian forms, which transfer the magic of the objects from her drawings into the third dimension, i.e. into our reality. Anna Lea Hucht thus reverses the perspectives. While in her watercolors and charcoal drawings it is us who witness wondrous chamber plays, her sculptures, in turn, seem to watch us, and there is certainly nothing threatening about this. The heads, which sometimes appear compact and locked-up and sometimes seem to be at ease with themselves, rather represent the magic of Anna Lea Hucht’s striking world of objects.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Stephan Berg, Jens Braun, Christoph Schreier and Vanessa Theodoropoulou. Design: Daniel Rother, Berlin
17 November 2016 - 22 January 2017
In her drawings and watercolors Anna Lea Hucht unfolds a bizarre yet magical world. Her works on paper let us catch a glimpse into a universe in which the familiar and the strange connect in quite an unusual way. The settings which we often view upon from above feel familiar and provide a steady frame for all kinds of oddities and curiosities – like dancing dervishes or ghostly creatures – as well as mundane situations and objects that through isolation and shifts in form and dimension seem to be charged with magic. These rooms appear to be under some kind of spell which has us assume a spiritual kinship between the artist and the masters of surrealism and magical realism. However, the art of the latter lacks the addition of humor which is often part of Anna Lea Hucht’s works. A good example for this is one of her watercolors depicting a group of fantastic African figures that as ethnological quotes now inhabit a western living room. Being one half human and one half masked creatures, in their new environment they stage a clash of cultures which in Hucht’s work is a matter of course. Secretly, one might wonder, though, what kind of rituals are practiced in this living room... A question that will most likely remain unanswered since Hucht’s compositions can never be broken down into a pictorial narrative. In fact, the opposite is the case: Through mutual questioning the individual objects are illuminated and thus charged with the pathos of the mysterious.
Thus, it is not surprising that Anna Lea Hucht developed the isolation of the object further in form of her ceramic works. In 2007, she started creating her first sculptures that can be seen as the result of a densification of the repertoire of forms used in her works on paper. Her latest sculptures look like mutants between vases, head shapes, living room decorations and pre-Columbian forms, which transfer the magic of the objects from her drawings into the third dimension, i.e. into our reality. Anna Lea Hucht thus reverses the perspectives. While in her watercolors and charcoal drawings it is us who witness wondrous chamber plays, her sculptures, in turn, seem to watch us, and there is certainly nothing threatening about this. The heads, which sometimes appear compact and locked-up and sometimes seem to be at ease with themselves, rather represent the magic of Anna Lea Hucht’s striking world of objects.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Stephan Berg, Jens Braun, Christoph Schreier and Vanessa Theodoropoulou. Design: Daniel Rother, Berlin